Rivers are ideal subjects for environmental historians not only because water access is a pressing issue today, but also as they are sites of complex human-nature interactions. Human transformations of river systems have not always been detrimental, but generally they have had major negative consequences, emblematic of the Anthropocene. Early historians of river systems (influenced by the contemporary environmentalist movement), like Donald Worster, were interested in how they were exploited for human use, believing that the stories of rivers were those of declension. Eventually, the declension focus gave way to a hybrid understanding of nature. Instead of cleaving the human and non-human apart: historians like Richard White have argued in favor viewing changes to “nature” as additions to a “second nature” not an aberration of “pristine nature.”
It follows that if humans have transformed rivers and rivers have transformed human life, river systems have also had profound effects on nation-states, power relations, and urban development. Rivers, unpredictable and uncontainable are useful environmental historical subjects because they eschew deterministic argumentation. Historians have pushed the boundaries of environmental historical study by challenging typical periodization, scales, and scopes to study rivers. They have utilized the methodologies of historians of politics, science, law and culture to evoke a similar underlying message: societies have not just changed rivers, rivers have transformed societies and altered the course of history. The rights to these rivers have also shifted in American history, and the process of providing these rights has not only left the environment in danger, but it has also created great inequity among Americans and Native Americans. So if we really want a “hybrid” understanding of nature, it’s critical to bring together not just the environmental and political shifts that create a second nature, but also the legal processes as well.